Ask HN: Review My App - mychipper.com

[tallasif]

Hi, I am a developer from India. Recently in my spare time I built http://mychipper.com/. This is a simple to use expense tracking tool.

There are lot of such tools already available but, for a typical user (read Indian) most of these tools are complex. Simplicity was the motto while building this application. Also accessibility was important for such a tool. So it has already been integrated with Gtalk and has a Mobile view too. Its also present on Orkut as an opensocial application. I am inclined towards taking this product further. What can be done to acquire more users? I am definitely not a product person. hence, any feedback on the product itself will be of great help.

[nbhat]

Make it social. Let people compare their spending habits with other people who are in the same income category or same spending budget. Ask questions who is the end user? Is it a person who wants to cut down on the costs or is it person who is trying to stick to his monthly budget? If so how is the user going to achieve by using the site? User has to do something after seeing at the graphs. Make it easier for the user to arrive at that decision. For example food budget is higher compared to others then you can provide hints to cut down on the food budget. It may take out the simplicity of the app.. It might be good to compare how is the person doing with respect last month etc. Notes field can be made available only if required. Graphs are taking lot of space. Can be moved left a little bit and show a bigger recent spending list.

[riklomas]

I like the simplicity of your app, it's nicely done, love the logo especially! I would suggest a few things though:

# Drop the bouncy effects on the summary hover as they're just distracting

# Show more than just 3 recent entries, if I'm writing a list of expenses, I need to see what I've already put in

# Maybe put a category field so I can choose from food, travel, etc. Maybe a select box in with the "what are you spending on?"

# A date range selector so I can see what I've spent over a particular period

[annextourist]

First up, thanks for sharing your app with Hacker News tallasif. It takes courage to bring something you made to a place where people will give honest and direct feedback.

I think you've succeeded in making an app that does one small thing simply. Congrats. Simple isn't always easy.

I have a usability concern that I haven't seen mentioned here yet. I like that the keyboard focus jumps to the Reason text box, but I feel that the "What are you spending on?" box needs more emphasis to be the clear main element of your app's UI.

The examples that jump to mind are how twitter puts the "What are you doing" box at the top centre of the app, or how Google puts a lone search box at the page centre.

Hope this helps.

[Stahir]

Very good interface, idea, style, and flow.

As for the purpose of the website, I believe it is a bit painstaking to sit and enter all the values in as anyone would on excel. This is just a better looking excel.

Reason why I am saying this is that you need to help improve on the idea, perhaps have a goal chart, where the user breaks down into percentage what they want to be spending on what, and you compare everyday to the goal chart. once they hit the max in their goal chart, they can choose to cut down spending and meet the goal or spend more and miss their goal.

I don't quite see the benefit if you get what I mean. Here is a tip, go to livestrong.com it is a website that helps you track your daily calories, look at their tracking system and draw some ideas that will make the users Want to use your system. They have an awards system which is also interesting, no physical reward, just badges your profile earns.

Good work & good luck.

[jeroen]

I started writing down some critique, but I think I can summarise: polish it. UI elements are not aligned, buttons don't work and "mm" doesn't seem like a valid entry for the month-field.

Oh, and more information about your product and less asking for information (phone nr?) might make people more inclined to register.

[andrewljohnson → jeroen]

mm is an extremely common placeholder for months in a date.

[jeroen → andrewljohnson]

Sure, but what is it doing in the UI? It isn't a valid option for the selection.

[tallasif → jeroen]

Thanks for your feedback guys. I think jeroen is right, It should just clearly say month / year, as the whole idea of the application is to make things simple. instead of mm/yyyy which is very techie and may not be obvious at all to the end user.

[chaosprophet]

The first thing that struck me was the clean, simple interface. The demo is quite nice, and viewing expenses as graphs is quite handy. Since you are aiming at making it extremely simple to use, I suggest you combine all those 4 text boxes (reason, amount, note and date) into one text and use a date time and currency parsing script to get the details.

As to getting users, you could try viral marketing on twitter, facebook and orkut. A large number of Indian users (me included) are migrating from orkut to facebook, so it would be good if you had a facebook app too. Create a facebook fan page or an orkut community and encourage interaction. All this will require a significant amount of time though, so make sure you are willing to spend your weekends on it.

[schindyguy]

I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but I think the "Chipper now on Mobile" and "Chipper now on Gtalk" is a great feature but I only realized what it did after I clicked on it. You should make the user understand that now "you can submit expenses to your mychipper account with Gtalk and Mobile SMS". Maybe look at how ping.fm organizes and makes the user understand this type of functionality.

I like the idea of creating a social aspect to it. Dont throw it their face, but give them an option to "share" their data and allow them to compare it to other mychipper users.

But I think you've got a dead simple app and good market to go after.

[roam]

Clickable: http://mychipper.com/

I like it. Nice and clean, the charts are exactly what I'd need and the options to view daily and monthly reports are good. Maybe it's a bit too minimal: use a bit of a gradient on buttons, use alternate background colors for the expense list; get a bit of color in there. And I'd change the "Reason" label to "Category".

[hellweaver666]

I don't get the GTalk thing... I've made friends with your bot, asked for 'help' got the instructions yet I get no feedback from the bot or any kind of reflection on my account that I've submitted anything.

If it worked, the GTalk integration would be really handy for me as I have Gmail open quite a lot.

[tallasif → hellweaver666]

Hey, Gtalk had a little bit of issue with decimal's. It was a case that just came to my mind when feedback started pouring in. Its been fixed now. I assume you also tried entering a decimal value.

[richesh]

Good job, overall I like it. I understand your audience and the need to do this in a simple format. Mint & Wesabe are US focused and don't cater to your audience. One thought is to make this available to other audiences - e.g. Chinese, African, etc. Because similar needs exist in those places and all you would have to change is language on your site.

My review is going to sound critical, but assume things I didn't mention are good

My first reaction (in order):

1. How is this better than Mint or Wesabe

2. Why would I start inputting things manually when others can crawl it for me.

3. "Oh this is for an Indian audience" - make this clear on the site

UI:

- Bouncy effects are distracting

- Use row background colors to differentiate between them

- Red cross is too prominent, grabs attention before anything else

- Graph is also grabbing attention which it is meant to but use different palette. You can look at Google Analytics, Woopra, Chartbeat, etc. to get an idea

- "Reason" label makes it seem like I can enter a long explanation but the text field makes it seem like I can enter a short description. Either change the label to something like "Expense Name" or change the text box.

- The sliding background on menu items (top and graph) feels jittery and lags when I move my mouse around too fast. This can be annoying to people with vision issues. Make it simple hover.

- Recent Entries should be horizontal width right under summary (same width as summary), because its the second most important thing I care about on the page. Inputting expense is a secondary task on a regular visit because when I have something input I'm going to seek out that form and record my expense.

- Red flags went up when I saw Sex, Phone, and DoB on the sign-up form. Never going to give that up to a new site. What are you planning on using this info for?

- Chipper on GTalk is another questionable practice. How do we know it's secure? It's fine as long as there won't be any long term personal data exchange.

Other thoughts: - SMS alerts or updates

- Create a "family" or "group" to track and compete (game like) with others

- If you get enough traction, give people tips on expense categories (e.g. Petrol at the gas station near your work is cheaper than the one you use near your home)

Good Luck. Good job, glad to see people looking to help other markets!

[tallasif → richesh]

I really have to thank you on this feedback. It was just more than helpful. You have pointed out issues that my very techie mind had not seen so far. I am very well taking into account every point you have mentioned. Thanks again.

[philjr]

It's rounding my cash up / down to the nearest euro/dollar. Now while I could multiply by 100 to put in 751 instead of 7.51 ... I think it'd be great not to. Maybe that's the engineer in me :)

[tallasif → philjr]

Hey, Thanks for pointing this out. As you see out here in India we deal with round numbers mostly. It just slipped my mind that internationally its a little different.

[asimjalis]

I got a PHP error when I went to the home page

A PHP Error was encountered Severity: Notice Message: Undefined variable: timezone Filename: geoip/timezone.php Line Number: 941

Otherwise it looks great.

[hellweaver666]

seems nice so far... question though, I just signed up - why do you "require" my date of birth and sex for an expense tracking tool?

[antidaily]

"reason" seems like a strange entry name. item/service seems more appropriate.